My rental property got destroyed. Yeah. In this episode, I'm just going to sit here and
talk to you about what it's really like to be a landlord. What it's really like to have to put a
property back together and how much it really costs when something goes wrong, let's go.
So lemme tell you the story about this property here. So this is an amazing three bedroom,
two and a half bathroom townhouse in Kasimir. I absolutely love this rental property because it's
a short term rental that I got fully furnished. I got this property for less than $200,000 in 2019
and it has been a great money maker for me. You can see these beautiful pictures of exactly how
we got it and what it looked like and then when we got the property, after about a year of putting
it on Airbnb and other short-term rental websites, we were able to upgrade some of the furniture,
upgrade the lighting in the kitchen, and even upgrade some of the look and decor of
the property. We were already making money when we first got the property because like I said,
it was a short-term rental property when I bought it and it came fully furnished and it even came
with bookings. So it was amazing to be able to get a turnkey rental property and just start making
money as soon as I closed. Well after we closed on the property, things were going really good for
well over a year and we had no issues whatsoever with this property. It stayed booked. It's five
minutes away from Disney World and we were getting great reviews on this property. People absolutely
loved it, especially some of the features inside of this community. So before I get to how the
property got destroyed, let me share with you this whole community. Like I said, this property is a
three bedroom, two and a half bath townhouse. And so you'll see this section over here has
lots of townhouses and this whole section is just full of townhouses that are either two bedrooms,
all the way up to five bedrooms. But also in this community you'll see that there are single family
residences. And in fact, I used to actually own one of these houses, but I sold it in 2020 and
made a good profit on it. But these properties rent from anywhere from a hundred dollars a night
to almost a thousand dollars per night year round because it is so close to Disney World
and it is in a great area. Additionally, inside of this community, you will see there is so many
beautiful amenities. The pool in this resort area is beautiful and it's open year round, and
this pool is heated year round so you can get in this pool no matter what month it is and people
absolutely love it, especially with the swim up bar. Also by the bar, you'll notice there's
a clubhouse and inside the clubhouse people can watch movies. You can go in there and play games,
you can relax, you can have family reunions. It's just a great place for people to gather.
So this property has been amazing for us because it's a great vacation rental property, but it's
also a great property for people to gather if they want to have a small retreat or an event or for
families to come and rent multiple properties in this area and then go visit all of the attractions
in the Orlando area. For us to be able to get this property for less than $200,000 and be
able to make all of this money on this property, this has been a great rental property. So let me
tell you how it went bad. Well, like I said, we were renting this property on sites like Airbnb,
HomeAway, Vacation Rental by Owner, Expedia, and all of the short-term rental sites. And we were
keeping this property booked so much it stayed booked where you could barely even get to book
a night because it was always booked. It's super affordable and the location is so close to Disney.
But we were having some issues with our reviews because some of the people started to tell us
that the air conditioning unit kept going out. We really did not understand why the air conditioning
unit kept going out, but we kept sending people out there to fix it and then it would be fine when
we would go on with our lives. Well then a week later the air conditioning would go out again and
we would notice that there was water pooling at the bottom by the air conditioning unit,
but we really just thought it was water and water condensation from the air conditioning unit that
was causing all of the issues. So once we got the air conditioning fixed three, four times,
we just assumed that this issue was totally done and we were going to be all set. Boy were
we wrong. Well, we then had a guest that stayed in the property and told us that the downstairs
air felt different than the upstairs air. Now let me say that again cause I know that sounds
super weird. They said that the air downstairs felt different than the air upstairs. Well,
what does that even mean? Obviously we do property management, we do Airbnb, so we are big into
hospitality. We want our guests to be happy. We do not want them to be complaining about anything and
we kill for those five star reviews. Those are the lifeline of our business. We need great reviews so
that our properties stay at the top of searches and people book our properties. So we do not need
people being unhappy and telling us the air in our property isn't quite right. So we sent in a
technician to go in and see kind of what was going on, and that's when we discovered the big issue.
Mold, mold, mold, mold, mold, yes, mold. Mold is awful for a property. This is what happens
when you have moisture and water inside of a property and it will create spores that
are called mold and they are very hazardous to our healths as human and even to dogs and cats,
a lot of times they cannot deal with mold issues either. And I have all of the pictures to show you
because this was awful. So behind the washer dryer and where the air conditioning unit is,
you will see that there was all of this mold. Look at it all on the floor, all of this black and you
can see the mold. It is pretty scary stuff and we knew we had to get this fixed. We immediately
had to cancel all of our bookings that we had in our property, and that was a absolute disaster.
That really takes the business down when you have confirmed bookings and you have to cancel
them or move them to a different property. Luckily, we are real estate entrepreneurs,
so we have dozens of properties. So we were able to move a lot of the people that have booked this
property to other properties that we have in the area. But just think, imagine if we only
had one property. Imagine if we were just really small time, we would've lost all of our bookings
and we would've gotten a bad review or rating or feeling from the people that we took the bookings
from and then canceled. So luckily for us, we have a situation, and I always tell you, keep
growing your business. Do not just stop at one or two properties. The more properties you have,
the more secure you are in your business. Literally, real estate creates security,
not the other way around where you don't have real estate. So long story short, you'll see
the pictures here. The property had a lot of big mold issues and you will see that we had to call
and get three different quotes. We got quotes that range anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000. You
always wanna get three quotes whenever it comes to any type of repair. I know I teach you this all
the time, but no, you do not just get one or two quotes. You always wanna get three and you usually
want to pick the one in the middle. Don't pick the one that's the most expensive. Don't pick the one
that's the cheapest, pick the one in the middle. Well, that's just a theory because that is what
I teach you and sometimes even that doesn't work out. But you wanna at least do your research, do
your due diligence and do the best that you can. So the quote that we got that we decided to go
was with a company called Fast Restoration. They are a franchise, and so their quote was right
in the middle. However, I'm going to share with you a big secret. I feel like they tripped us
just a little bit because there are two parts when it comes to mold. There's the remediation part and
then there's the restoration part. Yeah, meaning you have to remediate to take the mold out and
then you have to restore. You have to put the property back together. So the quote that they
gave us was just for the remediation. So we picked the middle quote and it was $4,000 and something,
but we were way off because then there was another over $4,000 that we had to pay for the
restoration. So that's the long story there. I'm going to quickly show you some before and after
pictures so you can see how we remediated the mold and then show you some great footage on how we
restored the property and how we have it now back together. This process took over a month. As you
start to see them pulling out the drywall, pulling down where the mold is and doing the remediation,
pulling in these air dryers and air drying out the whole area, and then putting all of that drywall
back, painting it, and putting the property and the carpet all back together. One of the
delays that we had was the carpeting. Obviously we had just got this carpets done. Like I said,
we were making so much money with this property that we got a new living room set. We got new
lighting fixtures for the kitchen and the dining area, and we had put brand new carpet through
the whole upstairs unit, but we found that there was mold under the bottom of the carpets on some
of the downstairs carpets. So we had to replace that with brand new carpet because like I said,
things that get mold on them cannot be kept. You have to replace. So this was nearly $10,000 worth
of work. Our property was destroyed by this mold, by this faulty air conditioning unit. But now as
you can see, we have gotten this property fixed. It was quite the journey, and now we are back on
Airbnb and getting those five star reviews again. So I have been in real estate and I have learned
so much, and I've put it all here in this book, Real Estate Millionaire Secrets, and you can get
this book absolutely free just by going to noelles freebook.com. This book teaches you how I started
from my parents' basement to the multimillionaire in real estate you see today. There are templates,
scripts, charts, and everything that you need to start your real estate journey and become
successful just like me. Again, go to noellesfree book.com and get this book absolutely free. You
just cover the shipping. I just wanna make sure that you have all of the resources, all of the
tools, and all of the knowledge that you need to be successful. This is Noelle, to your success.